Word: highway
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...scientists have found that roads are the single best (but not infallible) predictor of tropical deforestation. In the Brazilian Amazon, roughly 75% of the deforestation that has taken place has occurred within 50 km of a paved road. In the 26 years after the 1965 paving of the slender highway between the Amazon city of Bel?m and Bras?lia, 58% of the forests disappeared in a 100-km swath on either side of the road. The paving of 1,460 km of highway BR-364 between the city of Cuiab? in Mato Grosso and Porto Velho in Rond?nia caused the disappearance...
...highway menace is coming to this part of Par?. Brazil?s ministries of planning and transportation have ignored or forgotten the trauma of 1998 and, without consulting the federal Ministry of Environment, have approved paving the last dirt stretch of BR-163, which runs 1,741 km north and east from Campo Grande in Mato Grosso do Sul to the city of Santar?m in Par?. The 700-km unpaved section runs directly past Tapaj?s National Forest and on through millions of hectares of the most vulnerable parts of the rain forest. Says Nepstad: ?Brazilian scientists call this area the ?corridor...
...unpaved stretch takes six days to drive in the rainy season. It would require less than a day on an all-weather surface. The decision to pave the highway is largely the product of vigorous lobbying by giant agribusinesses, which see the route as a more profitable way to export soybeans. (After the U.S., Brazil is the world?s largest exporter of the crop.) A Brazilian-American consortium is planning to build an enormous dock-and-loading system in Santar?m, the sleepy port that lies at the junction of the Tapaj?s and Amazon rivers, 700 km from the Atlantic Ocean...
...Remarkably, this unsanctioned invasion took place in plain view on one of the most traveled stretches of the busiest highway in Rond?nia. Moreover, the dozen or so clearings were cut in less than a week, a coordinated assault that bespeaks organization and planning. Antonio Alves, one of the settlers, says he came here because he was told the land did not belong to anyone. In fact, it belongs to a nonprofit organization that has not been able to produce clear title to the land; ibama officials guess that the settlers were tipped to this opportunity by a local politician...
...Nonetheless, baranek stands out as a relative skeptic in his region, where everyone else speaks of the advent of the paved road as a magic pill for economic development. While all fear fire, few make the connection with the highway, and even fewer in this part of Par? are aware that they live in a potential tinderbox...